The wait is almost over.
For years we’ve all been anguishing over the relative lack of board game related disaster movies in our collective cultural life since the 1995 Robin Williams vehicle, “Jumanji” — give or take a “Battleship” here and there. Anguish no longer, as Sony has at long last released the first trailer for “Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle,” yet another sequel to a long forgotten film franchise that no one cares about anymore. Here’s the official synopsis :
When four high-school kids discover an old video game console with a game they’ve never heard of – Jumanji – they are immediately drawn into the game’s jungle setting, literally becoming the avatars they chose: gamer Spencer becomes a brawny adventurer (Dwayne Johnson); football jock Fridge loses (in his words) “the top two feet of his body” and becomes an Einstein (Kevin Hart); popular girl Bethany becomes a middle-aged male professor (Jack Black); and wallflower Martha becomes a badass warrior (Karen Gillan). What they discover is that you don’t just play Jumanji – you must survive it. To beat the game and return to the real world, they’ll have to go on the most dangerous adventure of their lives, discover what Alan Parrish left 20 years ago, and change the way they think about themselves – or they’ll be stuck in the game forever…
See? Nothing to worry about. You’ll have your fix of Jumanji hijinks soon enough. To further put yourself at ease, keep in mind that with “Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle” you are in the hands of filmmaker Jake Kasdan, director of such comedy classics as “Bad Teacher” and “Sex Tape.”
The fact that “Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle” co-stars Bobby Cannavale and Rhys Darby does mean that “Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle” might not entirely be a waste of time. Although it does mean that Bobby Cannavale and Rhys Darby spent months of their lives working on “Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle” instead of doing anything else.
“Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle” opens on December 20th.